Patrycja and Lukrecja are two transvestites who grew up in a communist state. They spent the 70s and 80s on the margins and found glamour in misery, strutting in parks and public restrooms, seducing Soviet soldiers, living off drunks, and watching their friends die of AIDS.
For anyone who was not there, their shameless and mischievous stories from those years seem scandalous. Now they are about to go to Lubiewo, a coastal and tourist town on the Baltic inhabited by a younger generation of emancipated gays, and they realize that being gay in today’s reactionary and self-righteous Poland is no longer as interesting as it was under the communists. The veterans and the young maintain a fierce struggle. The former claim their dissolute customs and retain some nostalgia for communist Poland. The latter, more civilized, demand equality, respect, the right to marriage and adoption... All share a taste for dispute and extravagance. Like in the Decameron, in Lovetown portraits, anecdotes, sexual scenes, and memories of debauchery mingle and take us to a hidden world. Heir to Pasolini, but also to Selby of Last Exit to Brooklyn, Witkowski carries out a literary feat. Constantly changing perspective, he moves from tragedy to comedy, from idyll to satire, from the sordid to the sublime, with a freedom that mocks all taboos.
